Clever but BAD

Just visited a client’s house in the West Village and this doorknob installation made me laugh it was so BAD! They bought this place newly renovated in, oh I don’t know, probably around ’98 I would guess. It’s one of those gorgeous Landmarked buildings down there but the interior renovation was clearly a “SELL RENO” that has all the high-end hardware that looks good at first but then things start to fall apart little by little….

I’ve never seen a trick this bad though – the door is a standard 1-3/4″ metal door (which is bad enough in a high end house…) but the knob & latch is  a fancy Baldwin that requires a smaller hole than the standard 2-1/8″. So what did they do since metal doors always come with the bigger hole? They filled it with some sort of wood putty or Bondo, and redrilled a smaller hole into that material for mounting the knobs. I’ll bet they were so proud of their ingenuity… but now all that fill has shattered & fallen out so the knob is just hanging there, looking all ugly.

Amazing….